Veteran coach of professional copywriters and business owners who are familiar and comfortable with direct response marketing. www.GarfinkelCoaching.com

Mar 6, 2017

They Won’t Work (Too) Hard To Buy From You

7 DEADLY SINS-SLOTH

One of the hardest things a copywriter has to do is to make things easy to understand, and seem simple to do.

But this is where one of the Seven Deadly Sins, sloth, can work in your favor.

Sloth, of course, is an old-fashioned word for laziness.

And if you were starting to think I was going to let you off the hook and tell you that you could be lazy (instead of doing the hard work to figure out how to make things easy for your customer)… well, nice try.

But you see… just as you were hoping to get off the hook yourself… and not have to do any hard work… so are your customers.

Every… last… one… of… them.

Because, even the hardest-working and most industrious of your customers are fundamentally lazy.

(At least… when it comes to buying your stuff… )

See, there’s only so many hours in the day. Only so many “units of effort” in any given person.

Now, did you really think they want to spend their precious energy trying to wrap their minds around what you wrote, striving to figure it out… only so they can have the privilege of giving you their money?

Nah… easier to click over to something else.

Harsh, I know.

But sometimes it’s better to face the harsh truth and make the sale, rather than live in fantasyland and let your sales just float away.

All because it was too much trouble for a prospect to buy from you.

My buddy Bob has a great phrase: “Department of Sales Prevention.”

Every time you use a big word your prospect doesn’t understand (because it was too much trouble for you to find a simpler way to say the same thing), you’re adding square feet to the Department of Sales Prevention in your own business.

Or what about creating a complicated and annoying ordering process?

You see, in every piece of copy, there’s a silent battle going on:

The prospect’s sloth… versus… the Department of Sales Prevention.

Me, I think it’s easier making a little effort to make everything super-simple to understand up-front, and collecting money afterwards… than slacking off while writing the copy, and facing the shame and humiliation of zero sales.

What about you?

Care to put your customer’s sloth on your side?

(It’s very profitable, y’know… )

David Garfinkel is a veteran coach of professional copywriters and business owners who are familiar and comfortable with direct response marketing. For more information, visit Garfinkel Coaching.